Earlier, again.
Pioneer walks around the party crowd who mingle and dance around, having made the dancefloor their own again, with the surprise Tyrchid friends having flown off.
Too bad I didn’t get a chance to interview them...
Hmm... Zigon, was it? How come he was in such a hurry to leave as soon as I went to talk to him?
And all the others soon followed him...
Since that had been a bust, Pioneer wondered if Amethyst and Frank would be up for a special double interview instead.
Or perhaps, just up to have a casual chat, there were still many things he wished to ask them about. And it wouldn't hurt to talk about the future as well.
From atop the landing pads, he hadn’t been able to spot either of them, so he made his way back down into the crowd, deciding to ask the tallest person around.
He reaches the towering stick-figured and octopus-headed Churlen and taps on his chitinous leg.
He lowers himself to about Pioneer’s level to hear him in the noise, his thin stick-like legs’ knees reach out like javelins.
“Hey, Ghcraltult, Have you seen Amethyst and Frank?”
The Churlen extends back to his full height and peers over the crowds. He shakes his head as an answer, the face tentacles flapping about with the motion.
Pioneer nods to him as a thanks, even if he would have preferred a bit more elaboration.
Just where in the galaxy have my stars already gone to? If even Ghcraltult can’t see them...
I mean, it wasn’t all smooth sailing, but we still did a damned good show! Surely they’re just taking a break from all the hubbub somewhere quieter…?
He walks around the crowd, looking around some more, before making his way to the edges of the crowd, where the forest properly began.
Instead of Frank and Amethyst, he finds his sound director and two medical personnel, the three women have formed a small talk group separated from the others in this quieter grove.
“Can you imagine the vocal range? Just how high or low-frequency sounds could Tyrchids produce if they really tried?”
Holding a tall and thin, spherical glass, Lyra rotates a finger round and round its edge. A glass type, that resembled a wineglass of the past.
Next to her on the ground, is a whole bottle of “Red Goddess’ Blood – Taste of Martyr Divine.” It was half empty.
“Could they break a glass with their voice?”
“Huh?” Carol exclaims as she pats the corners of her mouth with a napkin, cleaning up some chocolate stains.
“Why a glass specifically?” She asks as she folds the napkin, as beige as her dress, hiding it underneath the plate she holds.
image [https://i.imgur.com/rSDuIm0.png]
“In the past, all of the best singers were evaluated on the glass-breaking scale. Based on if they could break a glass with their voice to begin with, and how thick of an object they could shatter.”
Lyra explains with her mouth in a rare open smile, her eyes as thin slits. “Haven’t you read any history books about music?”
“Are you sure that’s true? That sounds impossible, and weird even by Earth’s standards…” Friday comments and looks at her blankly.
With a trained motion, Lyra flicks the edge of her glass with a fingernail, but it doesn’t ring or resonate. The same result as always, it is like thin steel or wood, unyielding and rigid.
“Maybe it is impossible, but you heard the Tyrchids sing too. It’s unlike any voice I’ve heard in all my years. Doesn’t that make you excited?”
“That’s quite a strange thing to ask from two nurses,” Carol says, picks up a chocolate ball confectionery from her sweets-filled plate, and pops the sphere into her mouth.
“You have to admit, it’s such a Lyra thing though,” Friday says and steals a tiny muffin from Carol’s plate, the black-dressed woman manages this feat nimbly, despite Lyra being in between them.
“Hey!” Carol scowls at Friday, too slow to catch her thieving hand.
Lyra continues, ignoring their usual antics.
“Maybe I could still get Amethyst to make me some sound effects at least… But... how?
Those could really pop out in the promotional material, or edits... or make for some wonderful showmanship on stage...”
“Well, you were the one who refused to bring it up when you already met her once, if you just asked her…” Friday trails off as she notices somebody stepping into the vicinity of their talk group.
“Hate to interrupt, but you wouldn't happen to have seen her recently, or Frank for that matter?”
“Oh, if it isn’t Pioneer,” Lyra comments dryly and gulps some more of the bubbling red beverage. “We haven’t seen Frank, but-”
“Seen them, why? Are they missing?”
Friday wonders, and as she is distracted, Carol steals back a cookie from her plate instead, though she almost ends up yanking Friday’s long bangs that nearly swim on her plate.
“Not exactly, no, I just wanted to talk to them about the possibility of a... bonus interview.”
Carol quickly destroys the delicious evidence, responding while crunching on it.
“You should rest a bit Pioneer, instead of worrying about work all the time.”
Carol says, and Pioneer shirks from his scolding gaze. With a sigh, she continues:
“But regardless, we helped Amethyst with some pastries before, although we haven’t seen her since, right?”
“Yeah, though it wasn’t that long ago, I’m sure she’s around here-” Friday’s hand grasps empty air, and she looks down at her plate. “H-hey, where’s my- you stole-!”
Friday’s clamoring is shattered by a bone-chilling cry, a hopeless wail, that echoes from the dark forest behind the ladies.
The spooky and distant feminine voice fades away as quickly as it started.
“W-what was that?” Lyra coughs and sputters, almost inhaling some Red Goddess.
“That sounded…”
“-like somebody in pain.” Carol finishes the sentence that her colleague started.
The three women look at Pioneer who shakes his head and sighs.
“There’s just one thing to do.” Pioneer swipes the pastry plates from both of the nurses' hands, who protest against this grave offense.
He pushes the plates onto Lyra’s lap, who struggles to not drop them or her glass, holding them in a teetering pile.
“What’s the big idea?” Lyra scowls and some sweets spill onto the grass from her shaky overflowing lap.
Pioneer levels a serious gaze at them.
“Carol and Friday, grab your first aid kits, and let's go check it out.”
----------------------------------------
In the forest, behind the party, the trio travel, led by Pioneer, holding an electrical lantern.
Electric-powered items that resembled something of the olden days, were all the rage right now.
Carol and Friday had time for a change of shoes, but were still in their dresses, just with their medical overcoats on top of them, carrying first aid suitcases and other things they may need.
The surrounding forest is eerily silent, only the faint sound of their brisk steps on the grass, and the snapping of twigs at times play.
The ecosystem seems to be asleep, with no chirping birds or buzzing insects around.
There had been no more shouting, not even a peep, no trace of this loud disturbance from before.
“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” Carol asks.
“Yes, I think it came from somewhere around there,” Pioneer gestures further into the dark woods.
“C-can we… go back?” Friday asks with a wavering voice. “It was probably just… some wild animal. Maybe one of those Sabertigers.”
She gasps in realization.
“What if we run into one!?”
“C-come on now, don’t be silly.”
Pioneer attempts to sound cool and collected as he squeezes through two dormant, crossing plants, the underbrush might be fairly sparse, but most of the flora was still positively huge.
“Y-yeah. The whole ground would be shaking if there was even one here.” Carol agrees.
“If it moved! And what about… everything else? Isn’t all the wildlife here supposed to be super dangerous?” Friday sounds about ready to freak out.
“A-and didn’t Lyra come across a-!”
“Oh shush, Friday” Carol barks. “We’ll be fine, there’s nothing to worry about since we’ve got the big man himself with us, the explorer of the unknown, the savior of the sapient...”
She quips sarcastically, a wide smile breaking in the artificial flickering light on her lips.
“Hmm… I’ve been thinking, maybe we could let some of our medical staff go...” Pioneer talks back and glances at Carol and then shifts his gaze on Friday. “How does a promotion sound?”
“How is Pioneer's presence supposed to help me calm down?” Friday ignores Pioneer entirely and gestures to Carol walking beside her, with open hands.
“Or perhaps even two spots we could let go...” Pioneer mutters and continues to lead the way.
“Now, now. Enough joking around. We’ll be fine.” Carol says to Friday and then catches up to Pioneer's side.
“How much farther?” She touches his shoulder and leans in closer to whisper: “What did you see? Shouldn’t we be running?”
“A figure stood, or perhaps sat in the forest, other traces were faint, I couldn't see much of anything else from so far.”
“Are we even going the right way?” Friday crosses her arms and loudly buts into the silent conversation, following them a few steps behind.
As a response to both of their worries, Pioneer takes out his orange shades, their mirrored outer surface gleams harshly in the lantern light.
Then, he puts them on.
“What, again?” Friday looks at him bewildered. “What are you going to see in the darkness, with your sunglasses?”
“Just… give it time, you’ll eventually understand,” Carol says and instinctively taps the case of her own sunglasses, in the inside pocket of her medical uniform.
“So what do the Pioneer’s exploration instincts tell us?
Pioneer takes them off.
“Yes, this way, just a bit to the right.” His eyes grow narrow. “We should hurry.”
Carol and Pioneer start running.
“Come on! What’s going on?” The left-behind Friday runs after them and catches up.
Soon after this change in their approach, Friday has to admit, whatever Pioneer did, whatever the two knew that she didn’t, seemed to have accurately shown them the way.
“What’s that light? One of the lanterns from the party as well?”
“I-is someone there! Help... me!” A weak female voice shouts from the direction of the light.
“Luna? That’s Luna’s voice!” Friday recognizes her and bolts past Carol and Pioneer with surprising speed.
“F-Friday? Help…”
“Luna! We’re coming, hold on-!” Friday rushes to the clearing approaching ahead, but right at the edge, she stumbles.
However, she manages to catch her fall by rolling, a move learned in martial arts classes.
Her legs make the landing less than gracefully and strike the ground, a stinging ache in her knees and bones.
During the roll, she felt her fine dress rip from somewhere, but she didn’t spare it a second thought.
She grabs her first aid case from the ground with frightening speed and launches forward. She slides next to Luna on her knees, ruining her dress further.
“L-Luna…! W-what- how?”
Luna is pressing her chest with both hands, a pool of blood already around her on the ground.
Her shiny purple dress is ruined, bleeding holes peppered on the torn fabric filled with purple fragments sticking out.
Luna’s hands cover the main entry wound, the dress charred around it, showing a bit of her burned skin below.
A shattered purple bone lies in two larger pieces beside her.
“W-what happened?”
Friday lays her kit next to her and starts taking out supplies, shaken at the scene and the condition of her friend, but the firm first aid routine and professionalism still engraved in her mind, guide her.
“Amethyst?” Pioneer makes it to the clearing and spots her on the hoverplate.
“And Frank, too.” Carol drags his unconscious body into the light of the clearing, the source of Friday’s stumble.
Pioneer moves to Luna’s side and kneels, as Friday continues to treat her wounds frantically.
“Talk to me Luna, what happened?”
“F-Frank shot me… in a jealous rage.” Her face is so pale, it’s hard to imagine it had ever had any color.
Carol finds the laser rifle among the bushes as well.
“He certainly looks to be our shooter… but…”
“Well, let’s say he did shoot you. How come the both of them are unconscious?”
Pioneer says with a serious expression, further strengthened by the act of putting on his sunglasses.
Luna’s mouth moves slowly, but no words come out, she grimaces and groans in pain, her gaze unfocusing.
“H-hold on, Luna, can you hear me? Stay with me.” Despite her shouts, Luna’s eyes start closing in an unstoppable perpetual motion.
Friday gently takes hold of her eyelid, lifting it, but the eye barely responds to increased light.
“Carol? You did alert the rest of the crew right?” Pioneer looks back and meets her eyes.
“They should be on their way, yes,” Carol is kneeling next to Frank and shows Pioneer a tiny dart, gesturing she found it from Frank’s neck.
“B-but where can we treat her? She urgently needs blood and surgery!” Friday asks in a panic, even though she already knows the answer.
“We won’t have time to transport her anywhere on a spaceship, and we don’t exactly keep around a mobile fully equipped critical care hospital...”
Pioneer dashes any little hope Friday had left for a miracle.
“W-well, we should!” On the verge of tears, she keeps on treating Luna’s injuries and pressing upon her wounds. “How are we supposed to save anyone, if…”
“Friday...” Carol says and shakes her head.
“I’ll consider bringing it up as a necessary addition to the higher-ups the next time I meet them…” Pioneer says forlorn.
“Let’s just do what we can for her, the rest will be up to Luna.” Carol pats Friday on the shoulder, and checks her subordinate’s work, finding it satisfactory.
“N-no, there must be something…” Friday breaths sharply and shallowly as she speaks, trying not to cry.
Her hands hover over her face, but still briefly come into contact with her face spreading droplets of blood onto her skin.
She notices and wipes her bloody hands on the hem of her black dress hastily.
Carol returns to inspect the two other patients, and then, lights start to dart around in the forest, along with the sound of footsteps.
The bushes rustle, and an unknown man, steps into the clearing, met with incredulous gazes.
“Giving up so soon?”
“What, you heard us?” Carol’s comment is given no value, and the man presses on with his monologue.
“What if I told you, there’s a medical clinic, at least fairly well stocked, just around the corner? Surgeries and the like shouldn’t be an issue either.”
The man gestures pridefully with his hand, wearing a long white jacket, and donning short brown hair.
“W-who are you?” Friday wipes the moisture she couldn't hold back to her white uniform’s sleeve.
“Me? Well, just call me… Mr. Scientist, Savior... whatever you’d like, and thank your lucky stars I was around.”
From behind Mr. Scientist, the rest of the rescue party arrive with hoverplates of their own.
He holds a hand to his chest, and a strange yellow cat-like creature emerges from behind him, it runs to Frank and pokes his cheek with a paw carefully.
“Aww… aren’t you a cutie” Carol squats down and pets the strange cat without reservation. “Do you know Frank, you of magnificent fur?”
“Alright crew, get those three on some hoverplates, and let's get going. Oh, my bad, looks like Amethyst already has her own, how convenient.”
The strange science man orders them, receiving a cold reception as none of the staff budges.
“What Mr. Scientist said,” Pioneer affirms and the crew starts to dart around hurriedly.
“Thank you. Alrighty, once you’re done loading up, me and Pineapple will show you the way, won’t we?”
Pineapple is rolling around on the ground, as Carol pets and rubs his stomach with both hands.
“H-hey lady, you are interfering with the rescue operation, that’s our main source of light right there!”
“What? This little fluffy pie? Sure it's certainly lighting up my mood but- ack!” Pineapple rolls to his back and blinds Carol with a quick flash, before playfully running to Grent.
“Told ya.”
Carol rubs her eyes and smiles as she stands back up. “What a mischievous rascal.”
“Mr. Scientist, if you would.” Luna is ready to go on a hover plate already and Friday sits on top of it with her.
Two strapping stagehands are ready to push the platform along. “Hurry, please.” Friday looks at him with pleading eyes.
“Alright, let’s go, quickly now!” Mr. Scientist says and Pineapple takes on ahead with his bright light, turning the dark forest into day.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
The first wave of the rescue party leaves the clearing with them, the blokes pushing Luna’s advanced stretcher along with great speed.
As the more urgent care is handled, Carol approaches Pioneer.
“What do you think? I found two darts from Amethyst, one from her thigh and one from the neck. They both seem to be alive, sleeping probably, though can’t really say of Amethyst.”
He remains quiet while pressing a finger to the temple of his sunglasses.
“Where did you find Luna anyway?”
“Our drone operator called in sick last minute, I had to hire somebody...”
Pioneer says and trails off.
“Besides, her resume was impeccable, all of the skills we might need and then some.”
“A little too perfect, one might say?”
Carol sighs.
“I’m not blaming you, nobody could have foreseen… this.”
“Carol!” A staff member hollers to her, Frank and Amethyst’s are loaded up on plates and already pushed along.
“Try to chin up, it wasn’t your fault…”
Carol pats Pioneer on the shoulder, on the soft and expensive white fabric.
“Well, gotta go now...”
She takes a few running steps to her two patients and disappears into the forest with them.
Pioneer looks upon the now disturbed and dirty crimson pool. Shards of purple swim in this vital fluid, the red of life, now a symbol of death.
If it wasn’t my fault, then whose was it? In the end, I am always responsible for everyone, each and every one of your safety is my concern.
Something even worse might have happened today, though I cannot tell if we were lucky, or if this was actually the worst outcome...
Pioneer takes off his sunglasses, and pinches his brow, leaning onto his hand, he covers his face.
Why…?
What happened…?
Amethyst already on the platform, she and Frank tranquilized?
Luna shot by Frank… the shattered hollow bone of Amethyst next to her...
He considers the crime scene and all the evidence available, evaluating all of the involved parties' character and motives.
A somewhat clear theory forms in his mind, but he refrains from jumping to any conclusions just yet.
Regardless of the facts, of the evidence against her…
I really hope she lives...
----------------------------------------
Luna’s platform arrives at the doorway to Grent’s underground dwelling.
“Right, the plate’s too big to go through, you two, carry her inside, carefully.”
The two bulky stagehands nod in silent agreement and Friday hops off the plate.
She looks up at the massive and imposing steel plate that forms the clinic’s front and at the triangular hole in the base of it. “What’s up with this… hole…?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Grent says without looking at Friday, instead staring at Pineapple, who stares back at him, like anticipating something.
“If you say so…”
The surprising scenery distracts her for a moment more, as she gazes to the side at the plethora of charred and half-burned furniture and miscellaneous discarded tools but doesn’t say anything.
Friday shifts her attention back to Luna and helps the two men, making sure they carry her correctly.
Suddenly Pineapple jumps up and smacks his paws to Grent’s trousers, the cat’s sharp claws take hold just above his knee.
“W-what? What do you want?” Pineapple continues to stare straight into his eyes without giving anything away.
“Uh… g-good job Pineapple?” Grent scratches the soft fur underneath his chin carefully. The cat’s thunderous rumble of a purr starts, getting surprised looks from Friday and the men.
“Um… thanks for shadowing me and being nearby at the time, having you around was a big help…?”
The cat still looks at him with narrowed eyes, despite clearly enjoying this reward.
That wasn’t it either… what does he want…?
“You’re... free to go about your business again…? But… what were you doing at the party anyway?”
Apparently, this relieving of duty is what the Solarophone was waiting for, as it lets go of his pants and dashes away, back the way they came, before Grent even fully finishes his sentence.
“I didn’t mean that as permission for you to go back to the party! Ugh... fine! Just don’t get catnapped or something…”
He looks after the galloping cat with conflicted feelings.
Was he actually worried for that furball’s safety…?
Grent shakes his head and steps through the triangular door, to lead the way to their lab.
The two lads have Luna in a semi-gentle carry, Friday walks with them and supports her body further from the middle, catching her limp arm that falls off the side of her body as they cross the threshold and tucking it back on top of her body.
As Grent opens the sliding door for them, he spots Amandebot laying on the steely bed, hogging it completely.
“Oh…” Grent grimaces momentarily, with a tinge of regret recognizable on his face.
“Hold on a second, um, you, help me with this.” Grent points to Friday, and takes the robot’s shoulders, Friday proceeds to grab the legs.
“And be very very careful.”
“Is this... a human body-?” Friday struggles to lift it from the sheer weight of it. “It’s not… is it?”
They manage to lift it and haul it out of the way, putting it down onto the floor.
Friday’s eyes are wide, as she lets go of the human-like machine, the joints without the skin-like substance, cement its inorganic nature.
Shivers go down her spine, an ominous feeling captures her for a moment.
“Just what are you creating here…?” She asks without thinking, and instinctively rubs her hands against her medical coat.
“No need to worry about it.” Grent handwaves the issue away and dashes to cover the table with some plastic wrap stored at the end of the table before the two carriers put Luna down.
As soon as he manages it, they gently lay her down on the operating table and leave the room.
“Alright lass, I’ve got a bunch of stuff here, some drips in there, this metal cart has all sorts of surgery stuff and medicine and anesthetic and the like in that fridge and the cabinet next to it-”
Grent drowns Friday in a tide of information.
“R-right… You don’t have a Patcher here?”
Friday looks around the room, it doesn't resemble any medical facility she had seen; full of strange things, from the taxidermy animal heads on the walls down to the messy desk that made it look like somebody lives here.
“Those things take way too much energy, so no. You’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.”
“That’s… fine, I’ve trained for this…” She takes a few quick breaths, failing to calm her breathing.
”But I’m just a nurse though… Aren’t you a doctor?” She points at his white coat.
“No, no, no, I’m a scientist didn’t I say as much? Though even so, I can give it a shot if you’d like. The human body’s just a biological machine anyway, how hard can it be? I’ve treated myself a bunch.”
“Umm, I think I’ll do it.” Friday gathers things on the metal cart and drives it next to Luna. “You can be my assistant.”
“Bah, fine, I guess I’m the one who gave you the choice.”
“You wouldn't have any blood bags?” She sets up a cannula and prepares for a blood transfusion.
“Hm, I can check the fridge.” Grent goes to the medical fridge, and rifles through it.
“Would you look at that? There’s… four bags of blood.”
“Really? Amazing!” The hope in Friday’s voice is palpable if only for a moment, as she realizes what she has to ask next.
“Are they still usable...?”
Her assistant starts going through them one by one.
“This one’s a week over the expiration date… And these two are both four days over, but the last one has two days left.”
“Is there any O-?”
“Guess which of the blood bags had that in it?”
“The week old one… I guess it would have been too good to have universal donor blood at hand...”
Friday's hands stop working for a moment, and she looks downcast. Her stiff shoulders descend back down and she sighs.
“Mr. Assistant, can you test her blood type? Do you know how?”
“Sure, I can do that, if we have the equipment for it. Actually, hmm… I remember seeing…” He trails off and starts going through the things on the desk.
“Okay, In the meanwhile, I’ll…”
Friday takes up some instruments from the metal table, with trembling hands.
We don't have the equipment to stitch her internal organs back together if they got damaged...
But at least the searing of the laser should help a little with preventing internal bleeding, even if she already bled a lot... Though some of that was from the deeper surface wounds.
“I… I’ll start by properly dressing her gunshot wound and removing the shrapnel.
At least there’s no bullet in the main entry wound as she was shot by a laser...
“Oh, and I should stitch her properly now too.”
Fortunately, the laser dissipated before it could pierce her whole body…
She looks back at the assistant, who fiddles with drawers, trying to find something.
“H-how does that sound, Mr. Scientist?”
He meets her gaze. “May want to re-think the order, but other than that, sounds good, Dr…?”
“Friday.”
“I’m sure, you’ll get her to last to the next week.”
“Thanks,” She grins and blushes slightly, her hands becoming steady.
“I’m truly grateful for your aid, Tango King.” She blurts out and smiles sheepishly.
Mr. Scientist’s expression twitches, “Don’t know who that is, but you’re very welcome… it’s only what she- what anybody would have done in my situation...”
Grent moves on and searches through the upper cabinets. “I wonder if I could just use my machines here to check it instead… hmm… Oh!”
He holds out a white plastic package that reads: “At-home blood typing kit.”
“It might not be as accurate as a real medical test, but it’ll have to do.” Friday glances back and then starts to open Luna's preliminary bandages, to redo the laser wound's stitching.
“Please hurry with the testing assistant, she urgently needs blood.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m going as fast as I can.” The overqualified assistant fails to open the plastic bag barehanded, so he employs a swift precision strike from a scalpel.
He extracts a thick packet of instructions and a piece of rigid paper from inside it.
With the same scalpel, he draws some blood from Luna’s finger and directs the droplets onto the four circles printed on the piece of paper: A, B, D, and control.
Rotating it around carefully, the blood spreads within the bounds of their designated circles.
“Wait, what does it mean if all the spots are muddled except for control?” Mr. Scientist scratches his head and rifles through the endless sea of folded paper instructions to find an answer.
“That means her blood type is AB+!”
Friday drops the needle, but thankfully she has already finished the stitching, and it just clatters onto the metal cart's tray.
“Hmm… is that bad?”
“No, no! That’s fantastic! AB+ can take in any type of blood without issue!”
Friday looks at this so-called Mr. Scientist dubiously. “It’s the universal recipient blood, didn’t you know?”
“Right, of course. How forgetful of me...”
“Please, bring the blood bag here, and we’ll start with that. If it’s not enough, we can look for donors once the worst is over.”
----------------------------------------
A knock on the lab door and it slides open.
“Is the doctor in?” Carol asks and Pioneer comes in behind her.
“Y-yeah?” Friday answers nervously, standing behind Luna's bed, monitoring the situation.
Carol walks next to the bed and inspects Luna, who appears stable and is breathing normally, albeit with machine assistance.
She’s covered up with a thin white blanket and her left arm is hooked up to a cannula, receiving new blood.
“Fine job Friday. I knew you could do it.” Carol pets Friday’s head, ruffling her brown hair, who looks a bit disgruntled in return.
”As for what comes to Frank and Amethyst, they appear to just be sleeping.”
“About that…” Pioneer speaks up. “Mr. Scientist if you could analyze these, it’d be most useful.”
He hands the darts to their Savior, sealed in a plastic bag, who looks at them curiously against the light.
“What are those?” Friday asks oblivious.
“Those were stuck to Frank and Amethyst's bodies, likely causing their slumber,” Pioneer answers matter-of-factly.
“Oh…” Friday looks at Luna, confused.
Grent peers intently into the see-through plastic bag.
Inside, are what appear to be darts about the length of a thumb’s nail, but… they don’t look manufactured per se.
A cylinder capsule, like a shell of a bullet but smaller, is sealed from the front, with… what looks like a needle that has some sort of mass at its base.
Is that…?
“This is… this is most definitely Intergalactic tech.”
“What makes you so sure?”
Grent holds the bag in the air, in front of Pioneer’s eyes.
“Have you taken a closer look at these? These aren’t darts, but… living beings. Or, half-living. Just the sort of biotech they use.”
“Really?” Pioneer peers closer.
“The capsule is attached to the head of what I suspect to be a Mosquitollibri. More specifically, the somnolent variant.
Its sting numbs and makes its victim fall into a slumber so that they can such their blood easier. They are quite lethal in a swarm.”
“What? Is that really possible?” Carol walks up to look at the darts too.
“See those tiny wings? They certainly can’t fly with them anymore, given the weight of the capsule, but I suspect they could be used to steer.
If my first hypothesis is correct, and these are indeed darts, then keeping the Mosquitollibri even barely alive, and launching it through the air with some sort of method, would allow it to seek out creatures with its thermal vision.
And combined with the aforementioned wings, which then allow it to steer to its destination, like say, Frank’s neck, these are quite the marvel of engineering.
Though provided it was shot in the right direction to start with, these things certainly wouldn't be able to make any drastic changes to their predetermined course.”
“That’s… incredible…” Pioneer mutters quietly, trying to fathom this technology.
“And frightening…” Carol adds and backs off, she returns to Friday, who doesn’t seem to be listening anymore.
“These Mosquitollibri seem to be dead now, but it's hard to say. I’ll see if I can confirm anything by analyzing the creature and the capsule’s contents.”
Mr. Scientist gets to his namesake activity, delicately lays the bag on to the table, and extracts one of the darts from within.
With tweezers and the help of a thin needle, he pries the head off the capsule, and a small amount of red blood explodes out onto the Petri dish below.
Oh, if I had opened Amethyst’s by mistake, would I have had another lab fire in my hands…?
Perhaps not, if what they told of the Sabertiger fight is anything to go by...
On the outside, the blood doesn’t seem any different, it might be tough to find any traces of the Mosquito’s anesthetic from it though.
He places the mosquito head and Frank’s blood in different devices, and waits for the analyzing to finish.
The head’s data reveals a 99% DNA match to the ‘Mosquitollibria Somnolentia Lethargus’ species.
The blood sample has the standard elements of what you’d expect in human blood, but faint traces of the known anesthetic, however, it seems to be slightly different; much more potent.
About 400% of a normal Mosquitollibri’s potency, if ordinarily, their victim would remain unconscious for 15-30 minutes, then logically they could sleep for anywhere between one to two hours with this. And Amethyst… perhaps at max even four hours due to her double dosage?
There were scarcely any records of people surviving the bites of multiple Somnolentia, so the effects of this sort of overdosage weren’t known.
But it would make sense that the anesthetic itself wouldn't be lethal even in large amounts, lest the insects would kill their victims too easily, got to have that heart pumping the blood up to the veins they can reach.
He also spots faint traces of unusual proteins and nutrients. Were these mixed into the poison to keep the Mosquitollibri barely alive?
Where was she storing these? Did she only have three? Her satchel didn’t have any more, even if it had other very suspicious items...
Hmm...
Did Luna know these would work on Amethyst?
If she did… how? An interesting hypothesis…
And what are her motives?
What would she have done to them if she hadn’t been shot?
There’s something I’m missing here…
Grent leans with his elbow onto the table and taps its surface with the fingers of his other hand.
What a fascinating mystery…
Amande, it’s like you said… good deeds do pay off.
I wouldn't have gotten involved in any of this intrigue without helping them.
...
Did you… like my song…?
Grent looks around to see nobody watching and checks his communicator, which is overflowing with notifications directed to his mystery ‘TangoKing’ handle.
They had already found his account and song on the Galaxy’s number-one music platform.
And a quick search into the gweb also solidifies his suspicions; headlines and articles were already popping up, and theories and discussions brewed.
The views of live videos posted by others were shooting to cosmic levels as were the listens on his side of things.
Sure, it wasn’t studio quality, but it was a stroke of genius to record the vocals to it with his communicator at the party back then, which also doubled as his mic.
It felt like this sort of real situation made him achieve a different kind of energy in it than when rehearsing it in the lab.
Did you hear it… across the galaxy and stars…?
Through the veil that separates us…?
I hope you enjoyed it if you did.
Many, many other people did at least… Funding secured for a while again.
I never would have thought… I would be the one...
Maybe you can join me, this was one of your many ideas too.
Doctors, engineers, scientists, singers, and writers, we would do anything, become anything, for our goal...
We’ll sing for the whole Universe, together, as we save it...
You’ll see.